"Up the airy mountain, Down the rushy glen, We daren't go a hunting For fear of little men..." William Allingham (19 Mar 1824 – 18 Nov 1889)
(Spoliers.) Made as The Forgotten, this infamous little low-budget independent picture from Planet Texas — shot on the grounds of the no longer existent Westminster Junior College and Bible Institute in Tehuacana — later hit the grindhouses mostly as Don't Look in the Basement (and sometimes as Death Ward #13 and/or The Snake Pit*) after Steve Minasian, Phil Scuderi and Robert Barsamian's Hallmark Releasing Corp took over the distribution. Hallmark, some might remember, had previously released another gritty, low-budget grindhouse staple a year earlier, Wes Craven's Last House on the Left (1972 / trailer), the famous tag line of which, "To avoid fainting keep repeating it's only a movie", they reused for Don't Look in the Basement (not to mention a number of other movies as well).
*As Death Ward No. 13, among other places it was screened, going by the ad above, was at the Wamesit Drive-in (R.I.P.) in Tewksbury, MA, where it was perfectly paired with Paul Bartel's excellent feature-film directorial debut, Private Parts (1972 / trailer). As The Snake Pit, a title stolen from the 1948 Oscar-winning drama, The Snake Pit (trailer) — which was directed by Anatole Litvak, stars Olivia de Havilland, and is based on the semi-autobiographical novel written by Mary Jan Ward– it got screened, among other places, at the Pittsfield Drive-in (likewise in MA and R.I.P.) with Mario Bava's "extreme" Twitch of the Death Nerve (1971 / trailer).
Trailer to
Don't Look in the Basement:
Written by Thomas Pope,* the scriptwriter of grindhouse auteur William Girdler's final directorial effort, The Manitou (1978 / trailer), and the arguably justifiably forgotten comedy Cold Dog Soup (1990 / trailer), the basic idea behind the plot of Don't Look in the Basement, like other movies before and since (e.g., Unheimlichen Geschichten [1932 / trailer], Manicomio [1954 / full Spanish film], Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon [1973 / full movie], Jan Svankmajer's Lunacy [2005 / trailer], Stonehearst Asylum [2014 / trailer] and etc.), is taken (in this case without credit) from Edgar Allen Poe's short horror story, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether (1845).
*Contrary to recent, inexplicable popular lore, music-video director Tim Pope, who was a 16-year-old lad living in Great Britain when Don't Look in the Basement was made, had nothing to do with this movie. To date (19.04.25), his only feature film credit is the laughable time-waster The Crow: City of Angels (1996 / trailer).
Shot in 12 days on a budget of under $100,000 — which, considering how the movie actually looks, seems a bit high — Don't Look in the Basement was the directorial debut of regional filmmaker Sherald Fergus Brownrigg (30 Sept 1937 – 20 Sept 1996), a man whose prior movie credits were diverse production credits on early Irvin Berwick (6 Jul 1914 – 29 Jun 1997) or Larry Buchanan (31 Jan 1923 – 2 Dec 2004) flotsam — indeed, S.F. Brownrigg possibly met his future wife, hobby nudist Elizabeth Ann Booth (a.k.a. Libby Hall), while he was doing the "sound" (what little there is) on Buchanan's The Naked Witch (1961), in which Ms. Booth/Hall played the titular role.
It is safe to say, for all the flaws that Don't Look in the Basement might have, it displays more filmic talent than is found in all of Buchanan's films together, and unlike that Texan's movies, is not a movie to watch just for laughs. Browning's film actually has (misshapen) balls.
When it comes to laughing, actually, Don't Look in the Basement has less laughs, intentional or otherwise, than its immediate grindhouse sibling, Last House on the Left, which even included laughs on purpose, or its similarly in-your-face and cheap distant grindhouse cousin, I Spit on Your Grave (1978 / trailer). But just like both those films, Don't Look in the Basement is a poorly made, threadbare production that cannot help but wear its cheapness on its sleeve.
Even more so than those two films, however, the overall primitive look and raw style of Don't Look in the Basement — as well as the movie's much more surreally illogical narrative and absolutely abysmal but unnerving music ("composed" by Robert Farrar) — works to the advantage for the movie, helping to make this cheesy, shabby-looking, and at times oddly sleazy slab of regional horror amazingly enthralling and effective. As unquestionably unreasonable as the story is, and as over-the-top or completely flat as some of the "acting" is, the numerous and obvious flaws of the movie coagulate to engender an ever-increasing and constant sense of dread and an aura of unease that are solidly underscored by the nut-house setting. To the film's advantage, its surreal and dreadful mood is also periodically given a shot of adrenaline in the form of sudden spurts of bloody violence. And the ending, as they often tended to be in the '70s, is wonderfully downbeat.
The movie opens by introducing the viewer to a few of the patients at Stephens Sanitarium — the lobotomized Sam (Bill McGhee [24 Jul 1930 – 17 Feb 2007] of High Yellow [1965 / trailer] and Drive-In [1976 / trailer]), a big Black man with the mentality of a child; Harriett (Camilla Carr of Brownrigg's Scum of the Earth [1974 / trailer] and Logan's Run [1976 / trailer]), who is convinced that the plastic doll in her hands is her real, living child; Sgt. Jaffee (Hugh Feagin), forever on the lookout for the oncoming attack of enemy forces; Danny (Jessie Kirby), an annoying Richard Simmons lookalike with a pathological need to aggravate others. But the true nutcase of the house is probably the man who runs it, Dr. Stephens (Michael Harvey [21 Jun 1917 – 15 Oct 1995] of Berlin Express [1948 / trailer], The Velvet Trap [1966 / full film] and Encounter with the Unknown [1972 / trailer], here in his final feature-film role), something one realizes the minute one sees him out on the lawn with the beady-eyed and sweaty former judge Oliver W. Cameron (Gene Ross [24 Oct 1930 – 23 Mar 2006] of Angel [1983 / trailer] and Lost Highway [1997 / trailer]), cheering the obviously disturbed man on to let out all his aggression by chopping away at a log with a big, heavy axe.
And just how nutty is Dr. Stephens? Well, when Nurse Jane (Jessie Lee Fulton [14 Jun 1912 – 29 Jun 1983] of Buster and Billie [1974 / trailer] and Brownrigg's Keep My Grave Open [1977 / full film]) comes to tell him that she has decided to quit and leave the sanatorium, he turns his back to the axe-yielding judge — with the expected results. Oddly, while Dr. Geraldine S. Masters (the busy regional actor Annabelle Weenick [5 Nov 1924 – 27 Aug 2003] of Strange Compulsion [1964 / trailer], The Black Cat [1966 / trailer], Quadroon [1971 / clip] and Wes Craven's Deadly Blessing [1981 / trailer]) is upset over his death, she is far more concerned about the future of the patients and institution and chooses not to inform the police. And it is into this situation that Nurse Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik*) shows up, coming to take on the position that Dr. Stephens had promised her....
*The attractive Roise Holotik, whose diaphanous gown partially hid her female charms on the cover of the April, 1972, issue of Playboy (below), had an extremely short, three B-film career — consisting of this one, Brownrigg's Encounter with the Unknown (1972 / trailer), and the ever-popular Horror High (1973 / trailer) — before moving on to become the wife of footballer Charlie Waters and a successful (by now retired) Dallas real estate agent. She is not the strongest thespian of movie, though she does have a good set of lungs and screams like a professional.
If you know the plot of Poe's original short story or any of the movies it has inspired, then you know the situation at Greenpark Asylum. Namely, it is just like with the current US government under Emperor Trump:
The Lunatics Have Taken over the Asylum
(by the Fun Boy Three):
But if Nurse Charlotte isn't crazy, she is somewhat naive and dense, and she sticks around much longer than any normal, sane person would, especially since there are so many road signs that all is not normal at Greenpark. The phone is dead, the rooms aren't lockable, patients warn her that she should leave — and more than one patient proves to have homicidal tendencies and actually tries to do her in.
She, in any event, has better luck than some of the patients in the house: poetry-spouting Mrs. Callingham (Rhea MacAdams [15 May 1884 – 20 July 1982] of Brownrigg's Don't Hang Up a.k.a. Don't Open the Door [1974 / trailer]), for example, has her tongue ripped out, while drug-addled Jennifer (former Lake Highlands High School and University of Texas alumnae Harryette Warren) gets a receipt-holder spike through the eye. The nymphomaniac Allyson King (Betty Chandler) unexpectedly survives till the end, but then she is so distracted by her dead telephone-repairman lover (Ray Daniels [?]) that perhaps the killer didn't see her as a threat. (Yep, the movie has a nod to necrophilia — in the Golden Age of Grindhouse, taboos were made to be broken.)
The gloomy narrative of Don't Look in the Basement may be beyond irrational, and the entire production looks both bargain-basement and ragtag, but that combined with the constant presence of over-the-top nutcases works in a manner that defies all logic. Those who don't like their movies cheap and sleazy and jugular probably won't like this movie, but they still might find themselves jerking in fright now and then (yep, there are a few effective jump scares). Those who open themselves to the overall vibe, look, and scurrility of the movie will definitely and unexpectedly find themselves looking beyond the cheese to feel an increasing unease and dread, and might probably even put the movie down for future re-watching.
That, in any event is what we plan to do. The scanned and panned version of Don't Look in the Basement we watched was the second of two films on a cheapo release from the now-defunct public-domain-trawling firm Digiview, where it was combined with the far older Creature Feature fave, the original House on Haunted Hill (1959 / trailer). The version of Brownrigg's movie on that DVD is scratchy and faded, and sometimes even gives the feeling that some scenes might also be slightly cut. (In truth, the movie could also just be poorly edited — but some jumps just come across as too extreme to be intentional.) Should we ever find a better copy, we would rewatch Don't Look in the Basement in a flash: the movie is truly an excellent example of mangy but efficient grindhouse product that delivers much more than it logically should. And for all its obvious grindhouse intentions, it also offers multiple possibilities of interpretation and intellectualization — something we'll save for when we finally see a restored version. (And, yes, Don't Look in the Basement is a movie that deserves restoration. Are you listening, agfaor byNWR?)
Diverse remakes or reinterpretations of Don't Look in the Basement have been announced over the years, but none have ever seen fruition. For that, however, S.F. & Libby Brownrigg's actor/director son Tony Brownrigg did make a sequel with a supernatural bent in 2015 titled, creatively enough, Don't Look in the Basement II (trailer).
In the case of Dale Berry (3 Sept 1928 – 20 Oct 2011), he is less forgotten than never known, or at least not by many — for simple comparison, Larry Buchanan (see: The Naked Witch [1961/64]) is a superstar when it comes to name familiarity. Over at the imdb, Woody Anders offers a dry biography: "Shelby Dale Berry was born [...] in Dallas, Texas. Berry married his childhood sweetheart Dorothy Louise Lewis (25 Jan 1947 – 20 Oct 2011) on January 25, 1947. Dale spent the central part of his life working with his father and uncle in the heavy construction machinery business. In the mid-1960s Berry wrote, directed, and/or produced a handful of low-budget regional exploitation films as well as acted in several movies. Moreover, Dale and his wife Dorothy were not only members of the DAC Country Club, but also were involved in charity organizations that raised funds for many children's charities. Berry died at age 83 on October 20, 2011 in Sunnyvale, Texas. He was survived by three children, five grandchildren, and five great grandchildren." (For more about the man, the myth, the filmmaker you never heard of, may we suggest the website byNWR?)
What follows, over three blog entries, is a typically meandering, all-over-the-place look at all the movies that we here at a wasted life could connect, however distantly, to Mr. Berry.*
*Should you know others, let us know.
The Natchez Trace
(1960, dir. Alan Crosland Jr.)
Perhaps a.k.a. Bandits of Natchez Trace. This low-budget western and now-misplaced movie — check your attic — is the directorial debut of Alan Crosland Jr (19 Jul 1918 – 18 Dec 2001), and is currently not found on any "official" Dale Berry filmography. Over at the hard-to-navigate byNWR, however, in an article-cum-interview with Berry's daughter, Susan Second, Dale Berry's friendship with the country singer, actor, and future barbiturate-overdose suicide Kenne "Horsecock" Duncan (17 Feb 1902 – 5 Feb 1972),* "the King of the Western Badmen", is brought up. Duncan apparently not only got "Dale acting work at the Iverson Ranch, where they shot 'some of the lowest of low-budget oaters'," but "also got Berry a small role in the 1959 western The Natchez Trace." Susan says, "Dad's IMDbdoesn't give him credit for the 1960 film Natchez Trace with Zachary Scott and William Campbell. I was only 12 years old, [but I] still remember being on location."
*Kenne "Horsecock" Duncan, who is found in some Ed Wood Jr. anti-classics — Night of the Ghouls (1959 / full movie), The Sinister Urge (1961 / trailer), and Revenge of the Virgins (1959 / movie) — "made his longtime friend and drinking buddy [...] Edward D. Wood Jr. the executor of his estate. After his funeral, his wake was held at Wood's swimming pool, with each of the guests reminiscing about Duncan [while] standing on the diving board. [imdb]" "'Duncan was "extremely popular with the ladies," according to Berry, who was also friendly with Wood and claimed that Ed's wife Kathy had an affair with Kenne that was "no secret" even to her husband. [...] 'Kenne had a book of the women he had in bed...there was over a thousand in there. A thousand women,' Wood crony Ronnie Ashcroft ([16 Feb 1923 – 14 Dec 1988], the director of The Astounding She Monster [1957] and The Girl with the Itch [1958 / full movie]) told Wood biographer Rudolph Grey. On the set of Night of the Ghouls, 'Kenne Duncan kept whispering obscene things in my ear,' said co-star Valda [Hanson] (according to what Kenne told Ashcroft, one of them being, 'Gee, I'd like to chew on your tits.') [byNWR]"
The Astounding She-Monster (1957) —
another anti-classic with Kenne "Horsecock" Duncan:
Berry himself also said that he was in the movie. Over at Western Clippings, in their detailed article on Kenne Duncan (which doesn't mention "Horsecock"), they quote Berry as saying: "I had a five-piece band [...] and we toured with him on up into the '50s. And I stayed in touch with him practically every week after that. Personality-wise, he was grumpy and grouchy. [...] He wasn't grouchy with everybody... if it was a good-lookin' girl he was the friendliest, nicest, sweetest person that ever was. If it was some guy he really didn't want to be bothered with... he was kind of a Pat Buttram-type. He could be nice in one breath and testy the next. Later, we made the movie Natchez Trace in late '59, and we hooked up in Natural Bridge, Tennessee."
Berry, BTW, also disagreed with the accepted "fact" that Duncan killed himself: "I just do not believe that! He loved life. He loved living. [...] Kenne did like to drink, and he'd had a light stroke and developed a little bit of a speech impediment. He was on whatever medication they gave you back then for strokes. So I think what happened, the booze mixed with the medication... I don't think he deliberately committed suicide. Statements in books that he was 'tired of living' are wrong... each day was a new conquest to him, especially if she was good-looking. [Western Clippings]"
The Natchez Trace, then, would be Dale Berry's earliest known film credit, even if no one knows where he is in the movie (most likely, crowd scenes or background filler). As the movie is "lost", it is impossible to ever know for sure. But what may be Berry's first movie was the second-to-last movie the oddly always oily-looking Zachary Scott (of Flaxy Martin [1949] and Ruthless [1948 / full movie]) was to make; by 3 October 1965, Scott was dead from a malignant brain tumor.
A fact of life:
It is often said that the movie is based on the eponymous novel by William Bradford Huie (13 Nov 1910 – 20 Nov 1986) — whose novel The Klansman (published 1967, made into a film [trailer] in 1974) we were never able to finish — but as far as we here at a wasted life can tell, despite the prevalence of this "fact" online, Huie never published a book titled Natchez Trace. (Also: doesn't it seem odd that, considering how well-known Huie was known in his day, his name isn't plastered on any Natchez Trace poster?)
The plot: "In the 1830s, in the wilderness area between Natchez, Mississippi and Nashville, Tennessee known as The Natchez Trace, ruthless highwayman and slave trader John A. Morrow (Scott) robs and kills travelers. When Morrow kills a plantation owner (Frank White [21 Jul 1920 – 3 Aug 2005] of The Bad Bunch [1973], with Jacqulin Cole), the man's daughter Sue (Marcia Henderson [22 Jul 1929 – 23 Nov 1987] of The Hypnotic Eye [1960], with Allison Hayes) and her fiancé Russ (William Campbell of Dementia 13 [1963]), conspire to stop him. By volunteering to become one of Morrow's band, Russ learns that Morrow plans to build an empire of thieves and become their dictator. Eventually Russ thwarts Morrow's plans and causes his downfall. [AFI Catalog]" (Note: plot descriptions online vary.)
Common Law Wife
(1961, dir. Larry Buchanan [uncredited] & Eric Sayers)
"A girl can learn a lot of lessons in the dark."
Baby Doll/Jonelle (Lacey Kelly/someone else)
"Jaw-droppingly incoherent, Common Law Wife is still worth a view: the ambient music is above par, the dialogue is campy and quotable: 'You tramp: Get out!' and the clever use of hand-held camerawork makes this by-the-numbers story interesting and intimate. A super low budget black and white gem: guerilla filmmaking. [GCBd]"
"You need target practice, Jody-boy. You couldn't hit a bull with a bass fiddle, let alone that cap gun."
Baby Doll/Jonelle (Lacey Kelly/someone else)
Released in Dallas, Planet Texas, on 20 July 1961. Eric Sayers's limited oeuvre of D-movie projects includes the two he produced, Invisible Avenger (1958 / full movie) and New Orleans After Dark (1958), this project here, and, some four years later, his last known (and only solo) directorial effort, The Garbage Man (1965), which appears to be a lost film. And then he disappeared. With Common Law Wife, Sayers took over an incomplete movie* directed by Larry Buchanan titled Swamp Rose and shot new scenes, sometimes (as in the case of the character Baby Doll) using a different actor, and changed the plot as well, to complete the movie. Buchanan's material was actually shot in color, but it was converted to B&W to "match" with the new material. The result was this psychotronic slab of hicksploitation.
Trailer to
Common Law Wife:
*The producers had done the exact same thing before, with success. "In 1961, producer M.A. Ripps, based in Mobile, Alabama, bought back [Bayou (1957)], added some new sex and shock sequences, a great new pre-credit banjo theme song intro and gave Bayou the effective new title, Poor White Trash. Often unconvincing doubles were used for the stars. [...] Because of the new scenes and a brilliant exploitation advertising campaign (radio, and newspaper teasers) the adults-only Poor White Trash was still playing in theatres as late as 1971 (!) and grossed an 'estimated $10 million'(!). [...] The incredible success of Poor White Trash helped spawn other country shockers like Common Law Wife [...]. [United Mutations]"
Great banjo music —
opening titles to Poor White Trash:
Of course, Ripps, along with his comrade in production crime Fred A. Kadane, is the man who got Common Law Wife up on the screen by buying Buchanan's unfinished Swamp Rose and getting Eric Sayers to finish it. Poor White Trash, BTW, was often paired with the great Roger Corman movie, his first flop, I Hate Your Guts! (Ripps's title) a.k.a. The Intruder (1962), which Ripps also distributed.
According to 42nd Street Pete, Meyer "Mike" A. Ripps, who was the down-South distributer of The Flesh Eaters (1964 / trailer), is the guy who filed the injunction against the release of a little movie titled Night of the Flesheaters, resulting in the movie being released under the even better (and now seminal) title, The Night of the Living Dead (1968). Not much is known about regional producer M.A. Ripps, the president of Cinema Distributors of America (CDA), whose name, in the obituary of his sister Fanny Ripps Meisler (28 Feb 1929 – 30 May 2016), is given as Meyer A. Ripps, but he seems to have also gone by Marion Alvin "Meyer" Ripps. A third sibling appears to have been named Harold W. Ripps, and their parents were Samuel Julius Rips (1900 - 1980) and Anne (born Mitchell) Ripps. Like his siblings, M.A. was born (1926) and raised in Mobile, Alabama, where his father ran Ripps & Ripps, a wholesale jewelry business at 51 Dauphin St. M.A. Ripps married fellow NYU graduate Joan Freidin in NYC in 1963 (see the 4 Nov 1963 issue of The New York Times) and, apparently, died 6 Jan 2012 at the age of 86 in Weston, Florida. He appears to be survived by a daughter, Amy Ellen Ripps, of Raleigh, N.C. Aside from pulling Eric Sayers in to do the new scenes for Common Law Wife, Ripps also produced Sayers's only other known (and lost) directorial effort, The Garbage Man (1963).
Aside from Poor White Trash, CDA & Ripps's most famous production is probably the infamous one featuring what you see above, namely June Wilkinson's bust...
Macumba Love (1960) —
the trailer:
The "original" Midway novel (below), from 1961, "a novel of present day immorality too incredible to be believed and too true to be ignored [back cover]", is neither based on nor the inspiration for the movie Common Law Wife, but it does have some fine cover art. In any event, "Karl Kramer was the pen name of Edward Morris, (1912?-1996?), about whom little more seems to be known, not even the exact dates of his birth and death. He had one story published in the December 1958 issue of Manhunt, 'Wait for Death,' and four paperback crime novels published by Monarch Books between 1959 and 1961. [Mystery Review]"
Kitley's Krypt has the plot to Common Law Wife (the movie): "The main story [is] about a rich old man named Shugfoot Rainey (!!!), played by George Edgley ([11 Feb 1899 – 3 Feb 1990] of The Black Cat [1966 / trailer]), who decides he's tired of his live-in mistress Linda (Annabelle Weenick [5 Nov 1924 – 27 Aug 2003] of Wes Craven's Deadly Blessings [1988] and more) over the last five years and wants to kick her out. That way his niece Jonelle (Lacey Kelly*) can come live with him to take care of him. A lot of strangeness goes on in that reasoning, which Linda even points out, that what he's thinking is downright incest. But Linda also discovers after talking with a lawyer that she has a few rights of her own. Throw in the local sheriff that wants to put the moves on Jonelle, or Baby Doll as she's called, even though he's married to her sister (Libby Hall)! Jonelle then gets mixed up with a local moonshiner Bull (Bert Masters), and it all comes to a sad but satisfying ending for all these low lives (sic)!"
*Lacey Kelly, a nudie cutie regular — for example, in Bunny Yeager's Nude Camera [1963 / 11.5 minutes] — seen below not from the film but in a photo by Bunny Yeager, only plays Jonelle/Baby Doll in some sequences. Who the second woman playing Jonelle was/is, is apparently unknown. "What makes the movie truly confusing, though, is that the two actresses playing the central femme fatale, Jonelle, look nothing like each other — not only that, but they don't walk the same, they have starkly contrasting body language and manner, their voices, their enunciation and even their word-choices are utterly different, and so on. In the early stages Sayers makes a token effort to disguise the fact that Jonelle transforms so completely between one scene and the next (or even within a scene), but later on he doesn't bother. [Noirish]"
"Why, she's your own blood niece. Hell, that's incest!"
Linda (Annabelle Weenick)
"Common Law Wife is a sleazy, modestly budgeted melodrama set to solid soundtrack and featuring some seriously entertaining scenery chewing on the part of the main cast members. George Edgley plays sweaty old Shugfoot with plenty of enthusiasm and Annabelle Weenick — who horror fans will recognize from her work with S.F. Brownrigg on Don't Hang Up a.k.a. Open The Door (1974 / trailer), Don't Look In The Basement (1973 / trailer) and Keep My Grave Open (1977 / full movie) — does a pretty solid job as his character's consistently angry mistress, but it's Lacey Kelly (who played Moon Doll in Doris Wishman's masterpiece, Nude On The Moon [1961 / trailer]!) who really steals the show. Blessed with curves in all the right places and the natural ability to fill out a bustier, she vamps her way through this production with plenty of slinky, sexy charm and she makes it look easy."
Has nothing to do with the movie —
Parliament's Common Law Wife:
"Baby Doll goes a skinny dippin', Baby Doll drives the Sheriff crazy, Baby Doll gets chased through the swamp by a potbellied moonshiner! Baby Doll doesn't know it, but Linda's now a pistol packin' mama! The downbeat, brutal ending, enhanced by gritty camerawork, is icing on this sleaze-o-rama cake. [Alfred Eaker]"
Dale Berry is on hand to play a character named Jess, Max Anderson plays Sheriff Jody (at least in the footage shot by Sayers), and Libby Booth a.k.a. Libby Hall (of The Naked Witch [1961/64]) is there to play Brenda, Baby Doll's sister — and all three show up again in the next film we look at as well!
While it lasts, the full movie –
Common Law Wife:
Beauty and the Cave
(1961, dir. unknown)
Release date and director unknown. "In this all-color nudie fantasy, an adventurer, miles from civilization, sees a beautiful, barely dressed young woman. Smitten, he pursues her through a dark cave system, but she's an unearthly, uncorrupted creature who belongs to no man...or is she? [Nonimusat imdb]"
Trailer to
Beauty and the Cave:
In our review of Larry Buchanan's Naked Witch (1961/64), we cast a quick and superficial eye less at this film than at the woman known to be in it, Libby Hall a.k.a. Libby Booth, the titular Beauty of this film and the Naked Witch in Buchanan's: "According to Buchanan, (see Psychotronic Video #24), Ms. Booth was a direct descendant of the assassin John Wilkes Booth (10 May 1838 – 26 Apr 1865) as well as the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth (10 Apr 1829 – 20 Aug 1912) — an amazing feat, seeing that the two men are not related. She ended up marrying The Naked Witch's soundman, S. F. Brownrigg (30 Sept 1937 – 20 Sept 1996), which would make her full name Elizabeth Ann Booth (imdb), a.k.a. Libby Hall Brownrigg (imdb). Brownrigg, of course, is [in]famous for his directorial debut drive-in hit Don't Look in the Basement (1973 / trailer) and his later Scum of the Earth a.k.a. Poor White Trash Part II (1974 / trailer). The short filmography of Ms. Booth/Hall, whom someone claims (in the trivia section of the film at imdb) was a nudist, also includes Buchanan's Common Law Wife (1961 / full film), the extremely obscure (and lost) cheapie Beauty and the Cave (1961 / trailer), and her son's cheapie sequel to her husband's first film, Don't Look in the Basement 2 (2015 / trailer)."
Yep, Beauty and the Cave is apparently another lost film (so check your attic) about which little is known for sure. The trailer, however, survives — see further above — and also definitely proves that Ms. Libby Booth/Hall stars as the Beauty; we are unsure whether the man seen in the trailer is Dale Berry or Max Anderson (although we would wager that one only sees Mr. Anderson). Some people conjecture that Dale Berry directed Beauty and the Cave, but one could just as easily conjecture that it is a Buchanan project — after all, both Max Anderson and Ms. Booth are found almost only in Buchanan movies, so one could assume Buchanan had his fingers in the pie here, too. One of Max Anderson's rare non-Buchanan credits, if one believes the imdb, is supposedly as background-filler in Jonathan Kaplan's second directorial effort, The Student Teachers (1973 / Trailer from Hell, with Dick Miller).
As the poster above reveals, Beauty and the Cave got released sometimes as a co-feature with two other movies, Private Sexy-tary and Naked Youth, and sometimes just with Naked Youth. We were able to find absolutely diddlysquat about Private Sexy-tary...
Has nothing to do with the movie —
Midnight's Private Sexytary (club mix):
...but we assume Naked Youth not to be the 1960 Japanese movie, Seishun zankoku monogatari, released in English-speaking lands as Cruel Story of Youth and Naked Youth, trailer below...
Trailer to
Cruel Story of Youth a.k.a. Naked Youth:
...but rather to be the 1961 juvenile-delinquent flick also known as Wild Youth. The latter film is the singular known directorial project of John F. Schreyer (13 Jul 1920 – 20 May 2003), who was a bit more active as a film editor, for example, on The Black Sleep (1956 / trailer), Voodoo Island (1957 / trailer / full film) and The Girl in Black Stockings (1957).
Over at the Internet Archives, they give the plot of Naked Youth as follows: "Escaping from a detention Honor Farm in New Mexico, 'Switch' (Steve Rowland of Hallucination Generation [1966 / trailer / full film]) and Frankie (future Log Cabin Republican Robert Arthur [18 Jun 1925 – 1 Oct 2008]) find refuge with Donna (Jan Brooks), a farm girl who is all of sweet-sixteen, and is in love with Frankie. But 'Switch', an expert with a switchblade knife, is a constant menace to the romance. When their beat-up jalopy breaks down they hitchhike a ride with Revis (John Goddard), a killer and dope peddler wanted by the U.S. Border Patrol and the Mexican Rurales."
About Naked Youth, Video Vacuum says, "This juvenile delinquent movie is better than some, but not as good as most of the genre. It's notable for actually featuring drugs as a major part of the story (in one scene we actually get to see a junkie's needle marks as she prepares to shoot up), a little blood, and some tantalizing hints at nudity. (It should've really been called Naked from the Back Youth.) Even though the flick has a harder edge than most of its type, the pacing is sluggish and the acting leaves a lot to be desired."
Naked Youth (1961) –
the full movie:
As evidenced by the advertisement below, found at that great but possibly defunct website Scene of Screen 13, as late as July 1968, Beauty and the Cave was still being screened, in this case at the Gayety Theatre in beautiful downtown Toledo, Ohio, a den of iniquity if there ever was one. Again, it was screened with another possible Dale Berry film, one that has been lost and forgotten in time but the title of which continuously pops up here and there in his orbit, namely Sexytary. Screen 13 conjectures that Sexytary might be a Mitam release and possibly a short. (The main feature of the triple feature, Arch Hall's possibly now lost Loves of a Psychiatrist [1968], was a Mitam release.)
A few years earlier, in August 1963, Beauty and the Cave made it to San Diego, CA, where we once had the displeasure of living; it played in Chula Vista at the Big Sky Drive-in ("Adults Only" / "Children Free") with the mysterious "--------- Youth" — in all likelihood, Naked Youth — and an "obscure B potboiler" from 1960, Get Outta Town, a.k.a. Gangster's Revenge, the directorial debut of the obscure Irish character actor Charles Davis (31 Aug 1925 – 12 Dec 2009).
Get Outta Town —
the full film:
According to the Encyclopedia of Native American Music of North America, the music to Beauty and the Cave was composed by the Oklahoman Native American (Cherokee) composer Jack Frederick Kilpatrick (23 Sep 1915 – 22 Feb 1967). An example of his work:
Jack Frederick Kilpatrick's
Symphony No. 5 in F-sharp Minor:
The Weird Ones
(1962, dir. Pat Boyette)
Premiered in San Antonio, Planet Texas, where it was also filmed, in February 1962. Dale Berry's connection to this lost science fiction comedy is a slim one: according to the AFI Catalog, he was in charge of the press for the film. Rest assured that this regional production has absolutely nothing to do with the 1962 paperback of the same name, which may also be science fiction but is a collection of seven tales...
The name of the movie's director, Pat Boyette (27 July 1923 – 14 Jan 2000), probably rings few bells, but after James Gunn's The Suicide Squad (2021 / trailer) at the latest, one can say that at least one of his creations has entered the national conscience. In 1966, four years after making this movie, the former newspaper cartoon illustrator (his job before films) began illustrating comic books for the unloved child of the comic book industry, Charlton Comics, and, in November 1966, he and the comic industry's possibly most prolific writer Joe Gill (13 July 1919 – 17 Dec 2006) created the non-superpower superhero (now anti-hero) The Peacemaker...
"Starfish? It's a slang term for butthole. Is there any connection?" Peacemaker (John Crena) in The Suicide Squad (2021 / trailer)
But to return to The Weird One, the first regional production (of three in total) that Pat Boyette was to write and direct. According to Brian Albright in his great book Regional Horror Films, 1958-1990: A State-by-State Guide with Interviews, "All copies of the film and related promotional materials were apparently destroyed in a garage fire, although a few posters have since surfaced."
Over at Slash Film, whence the above image from the movie comes, they write: "Though we are sorry for Boyette's loss, the film sounded silly at best and misogynistic at worst. Two sleazy press agents try to stop an evil space alien, the Astronik, from capturing and killing young women. Good! They lure him in with the help of a 'Cosmos-Cutie,' a sexualized woman posing as an alien herself. Less good! TV Guide described the film's erotic exploits as 'too brainless to be reckoned with' and, well, now nobody will be reckoning with them ever again."
Read Forum, which adds "Presented by Dale Berry [italics ours] and Charles Martinez" to the lost film's credits, says: "Boyette commented a bit further in an interview with the Astounding B Monster website: 'The Weird Ones got taken away from me,' he said, 'It got butchered and turned into a porno movie, practically. I haven't seen it and I don't want to see it because I would be absolutely infuriated.'" Read Forum go on to offer a plot summary supposedly taken from a pressbook: "A strange visitor from Outer Space, probably an 'ASTRONIK,' is on the Earth, bent upon murder and other equally diabolical crimes, all of which involve the fair maidens of our own planet. It seems possible that if the love bug would bite the brute he might simmer down and submit to capture and so a pair of intrepid press agents (Mike Braden and Rudy Duran) enlist a gorgeous Cosmos-Cutie as the lure for a trap in which they hope to enmesh It, Him, or What Have You. Will they succeed with only sex for bait?"
Neither Mike Braden nor Rudy Duran ever made another movie; where exactly minor character actor Lee Morgan (12 Jun 1902 – 30 Jan 1967), of The Body Snatcher / Ladrón de cadáveres (1957 / full movie) and The Neanderthal Man (1953 / full film)*, fits in the narrative no one knows, but Boyette's movies closed out Morgan's career. Who Phylis Warren was or where she went, who knows, but seeing that she is the only woman on the poster, she is surely the Cosmos Cutie.
*How low can you fall? We love The Neanderthal Man for the bad film it is, but some 28 years earlier, that film's director, E.W. Dupont (25 Dec 1891 – 12 Dec 1956), was a mover and shaker in the German film scene and directed one of the acknowledged masterpieces of the German silent film era, Variety (1925).
The whole film —
Variety (1925):
"The only thing that preceded Pat Boyette the artist was Pat Boyette the man. Everyone who had known or worked alongside him remembered him with respect and affection. Despite his many and varied accomplishments, he remained a modest and self-effacing individual. He had made innumerable friends in the comics field, most of whom he kept in regular contact with, and many a comic book personality has fond memories of long hours spent talking with Pat over the phone throughout the years. Despite his intense commitment and strong work ethics, no one interviewed has ever said anything bad about the man. The only thing more important to him than his work was his family: his wife of fifty four years, Bette, and his daughter Melissa. In the last few years, there has been a surge of interest in Boyette and his work, due in part to the rising market demand for Charlton's publications and other vintage horror comics. [...] Debatably an important figure in the history of the horror genre as a whole, one would be hard pressed to say that the contributions Aaron 'Pat' Boyette made during the sixties and seventies didn't have at least some impact on the medium of comics. [Scott Stine in Trashfiend Disposable Horror Fare of the 1960s & 1970s]"
Trailer to Pat Boyette's best-known film,
Dungeon of Harrow:
It appears, going the advert below, that The Weird Ones did manage to make it outside of San Antonio. Birmingham's now gone Art Theatre screened it in 1966 along with Scream of the Butterfly (1965), starring the Argentinean Nélida Lobato (19 Jun 1934 – 9 May 1982).
Opening credits of
Scream of the Butterfly:
The plot of that 1965 "sordid gem of sexploiter noir: "Our femme fatale Miss Slutzy-Wutzy Maria (Lobato) is prone to fast living and dancing, followed by Calgon nights and bedding down any man willing to satisfy her epic cravings. She weds Paul (William Turner) a bland businessman (Turner certainly makes him bland). On her wedding night, Maria understandably becomes bored with new hubby and finds young, ripped stud David (Nick Novarro, Turner's top competition in the awful acting department). But David has a secret. Maria is not the only cheater on hand. David is cheating on his lover, Christian (none other than the film's writer, Alan J. Smith). Smith clearly relishes his role and invests it with biting precision. The film is somewhat frank in dealing with a gay male relationship, which had to have been shocking for its time. [366 Weird Movies]"
At the time Scream of the Butterfly was made, Nélida Lobato was married to the film's director, Eber Lobato (28 Mar 1931 – 25 Dec 2014), a minor Argentinean actor, musician, artist, director...
If you know the plot of Poe's original short story or any of the movies it has inspired, then you know the situation at Greenpark Asylum. Namely, it is just like with the current US government under Emperor Trump: 
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